geno

Yup, I have to say that I completely understand why some people like it - it adds to the chaos, and your job is to mitigate/control the chaos (by eg. choosing to use Magic Missile like you mentioned). It's just not something I personally enjoy. :D

I do agree with the person you're replying to, in that I'm not a huge fan of DnD mechanics - "works ok-ish" is what I would also say about them. It does do its job just fine, so this isn't a big issue by any means.

Related to game mechanics in BG3, my personal issues are as follows:

1. Heavy reliance on RNG in combat. In turn-based games, I always prefer game mechanics which work as I planned, maybe with small variance (i.e. look at Advance Wars). Basically I prefer when my planning is the part determining how the combat flows (damage or cc? Which target? Where do I move to?) - there'll always be some "I'm not sure what happens on next round" due to just not being able to know what the enemies will do on their turn, so I don't really need even more RNG in the form of hit/miss (& save) rolls. Basically: chess is a good game as it is, I wouldn't want to have a 50-50 coin toss determining if I can kill a unit or not.

   • I do think that some form of randomness is fine, but I don't like that there's just so many layers of RNG in all things. Damage abilities: first roll if you hit or miss, and if you hit, then the damage variance is often like 5d6 (5 to 30) - it's almost like doing two rolls to figure out if you actually deal any notable amount of damage or not.

2. Practically everything related to the resting mechanic. I really feel like I would enjoy the game more if I just had fully recharged spells (and other stuff) in the beginning of any fight - and obviously then balance the game with that in mind. Where needed, devs could tag a certain area as "no resets here" so you know you'll be forced to do a couple of fights in a row without resets.

   • One reason making me think this way is just the amount of available food, since you get more than enough resources to do a full rest after practically any fight anyway - so now it just becomes a QoL issue. It's not "do I want to use my resources to reset here?", in practice the choice is just "do I want to spend a couple of minutes going through loading screens?".
   • If there was less food available so that you'd need to be careful about when/where you do a full rest, progress through the game would be: go forward until you fail a fight, load the game, do a full rest, fight with full resources - this really doesn't sound fun in practice. I don't think there's a way to implement this style of a resting mechanic in such a way that I'd personally like it (at least without changing a lot more about the game).

I do want to finish this with another disclaimer that I do think BG3 is a great game, and these are really just minor issues - I completed it yesterday and enjoyed my time for the whole ~120 hours. But my two biggest issues that I can point out about the game's mechanics are both just base mechanics of DnD.

Game of life?

Vast majority of it is active playing - I've thought about this earlier too, and I really rarely just afk or stand around while in game. Even if I'm just waiting for eg. raid to start, I usually just go do some gathering, pet battles, dailies, something.

Yup, that's what I used to get the number - along with an addon that saves all the data from different characters and sums up the played time of all of them. Last time I checked it showed over 1200 days (=28 800 hours) for me - but it's been a while since I checked the total, and it doesn't include characters in Classic (or deleted characters). So I just rounded it to 30k hours, close enough.

My most played character is my shaman, with 450 days (~11k hours) played - it was my main character from TBC to WoD (from 2007 to early 2015). Current main is Druid with 240 days (~6k hours). So these two characters alone are more than half of my total played time. :D

Roughly 30 000 hours in WoW. I've been playing it since 2005 - mostly active, only a couple of 1-6 month breaks.

Quick approximation - let's just ignore the exact dates:

• 18 years * 365 = 6570 days
• 30000 hours / 6570 days = ~4.57 hours/day

During the last 18 years, I've played an average of 4h 34min of WoW every day.

In other words: if I sleep 8 hours a day, during the last 18 years, I've spent about 28% of my waking hours playing WoW.

While I'm at it: I'm 34 years old. I have spent roughly 10% of my life playing WoW.

jfc lmao

Other MMOs: Guild Wars 1 & 2, FFXIV, are all between 1000-1500 hours each.

Outside of MMOs, the #1 is probably Trackmania (2020) at ~600 hours.

...what

...I guess it was indeed a disaster because I can't remember even hearing that name before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebo

originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013

It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.

I do like Nioh, it's always on my list of suggestions for people interested in that type of games. But I feel like it's also quite a different game from Dark Souls - there's room for both in the market, and I enjoy both for different reasons. While similar, Nioh's combat feels more like a fast-paced arcade-y brawler, while DS feels slower and more methodical. Personally I can't really say one is better than the other, since I just enjoy both of them - but they're different enough that it's clear that some players will prefer one over the other.

Outside of combat, I again feel like DS is a bit "slower", I spend more time just exploring and wondering where to go next, etc. Nioh areas and levels are (usually) a bit more straightforward and faster to progress due to its mission structure. Storytelling format is also really different. But again, I just enjoy both of them for different reasons.

Especially during New Game+ rounds 2 to 5, Nioh also gets much deeper in the gear minmaxing department compared to DS - I've 100%d all DLCs in both Niohs. The gearing system in Nioh is also made in such a way that sometimes it's useful to just go farm the same bosses over and over - this is something that doesn't really exist in DS. Then there's even the infinite boss arena mode. I personally often think about Nioh as "a game with DS-style combat design, Diablo-style progression". I love the end result.

As far as I know, they're planning to do similar DLC content in Wo Long too (new round of NG+ per DLC), and I'm waiting until they release all DLCs so I can go complete those too.

Blade of Darkness has been on my to-do list for quite a long time now, I really should get into it some day. :D

I was originally about to mention Fromsoft also creating Sekiro and Bloodborne in between Dark Souls sequels, but I guess it can be argued they're all just the same with different skin. AC is at least completely different. Personally I have no issues with game devs finding what they do best and just keep doing it with only minor improvements - as a player, I can just choose to play games from different devs anyway.

I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: "If you gave me this game with no title and told me it's Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you".

It's great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn't played any of the Dark Souls, but it's still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don't like the game, I really wouldn't expect Elden Ring changing that.

For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it's the "culmination of Dark Souls design", and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don't feel the need of getting more of the same.

But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that's quite different. :D

Considering the amount of “yarrrr” in this thread I’ll probably get stabbed for this take, but: shows/movies take time and money to create, and running these services isn’t free either. Is $15 really impossible to pay when you want to watch a show?

Cable doesn’t answer the problem of “I want to see [insert show] from start to finish, starting right now”, so it’s worthless as a service for most(?) people. As such, I feel like cable should be forgotten as a point of comparison - it’s a different and much more limited type of service.

Let’s say I have no streaming subs running right now. I feel like I want to check out [insert show]. I find out which service has it, and buy a month of [service] for like $15.

I watch the whole show. Now I also have the rest of the library to check out for the rest of the month. Maybe I find a couple of other movies/shows from the service, maybe not. It still cost me a whopping $15 to watch a full show, and I also now have temporary access to a practically random selection of shows (“random” = depending on whatever service I ended up buying).

Sure if it’s a long show it can take multiple months to view it, but I still feel like the cost is minimal compared to what I get. Nobody is asking you to pay for all of the different streaming services every month.

I’m using a show as an example - but if we’re talking about buying a month ($15) just to watch a single movie, I do agree that it can feel a bit expensive. But in most cases you can find a few other movies that you can check out during the next month. If you’d want to buy a single movie digitally, they often cost like $10-15 per movie anyway - might as well buy a month of sub at that point.

Sure, I’ll also be happier if stuff stays cheap, but anyway. The usual works here: if you don’t feel like a service is worth its cost, don’t buy it.

It’s not like there’s lack of entertainment in today’s world - some free, some filled with ads, some cheap, some expensive. Pick your poison, I guess.